Luke 1: 46-55
Singing Love
If your faith was a
cake, what would be the most important ingredients in it?
A slightly unusual
question to ask…but I imagine there would be a variety of answers from each of
you here today.
For some, the key
ingredient may have been a life changing experience, when God drew us in with
love… perhaps in a profound way. It’s a very real “something” that we can point
to.
It could have been to
do with finding God in a moment of absolute joy… or in the middle of darkness
and despair.
It might not one
special ingredient – but just the usual ones – prayer, scriptures, faithful service.
Basic, no-fuss, deeply embedded functional faith. Perhaps our recipe has been this
combination of familiar words, prayers, rituals that move us through the
seasons of the church year and our own lives: this is what comes together for
our particular faith journey.
Others see different things
in the mix: challenging injustice, transforming our society, caring for our world,
fighting on the side of the poor and oppressed – that’s what’s important.
For some, the
faith-cake is more organic, not so much a series of ingredients but a gradual
awakening, like yeast in dough. It’s a longing for something that we can’t
quite put our finger on, but that we see as the divine spark in us.
For me, I can relate
to a lot of these things, but one element of Christian faith that has kept me
connected over the years, and coming back to church, is… singing.
The combination of, at
times, profound words and music, from more contemporary songs of faith to
traditional hymns, take me on a journey that shows me the heart of God.
One of my lifelong
practices has been a Sunday morning listen (and maybe even sing along) to RNZ’s
Hymns for Sunday Morning – now accessed on-line so I don’t have to tune in at
rather inconvenient times.
However, Christian
songs have also at times put me off rather than engaged me: they are so personal
for many of us, triggering all kinds of memories and emotions. I can recall
nearly two years ago being moved to tears by singing a verse in Church from the
national anthem, in response to the terrorist attack in Christchurch. And, I can
also recall quietly leaving a service in Wellington just a few months ago, when
the music reminded me of faith settings that hadn’t been good for me, and I
didn’t want to re-enter what the music evoked.
On
a day when we pay special attention to Mary the mother of Jesus, it’s really
fitting to hear again the words of the Magnificat, one of the most powerful
songs of protest ever written. In fact, one of the marvelous things about a lot
of the scriptures are the songs that emerge everywhere.
Luke’s
gospel, in particular, is full of them.
Have
you ever noticed how often Luke employs songs in the first chapters of his
story about Jesus?
Mary
sings when she is greeted by her cousin Elizabeth (today’s reading). Zechariah
sings when his son John is born and his tongue is finally loosened. The angels
sing of peace and goodwill, sharing their “good news of great joy” with the
shepherds. And Simeon sings his song of farewell once he has seen God’s
promises to Israel kept in the Christ child.
Why,
one might wonder, all these songs?
Because
singing is an act of resistance, of exclaiming an
alternative reality to our current experience.
That’s
not to say, of course, that all singing is this. Sometimes it’s an act of joy or
of expressing solidarity and togetherness… but it’s also this act of
resistance.
You’ll
be aware of the significance of our gospel passage - and of Mary - in the
development of Christianity. In a very patriarchal society, Luke’s version of
this portion of the gospel has no men: the women get all the speaking parts.
Mary
(and Elizabeth in the verses beforehand) are seen as prophets. The story
is told in a way that echoes the same pattern of the prophetic calling of them,
concluding with the ultimate proclamation of God’s words, that turn the
expected order of things upside down.
The
older cousin, Elizabeth, living with the societal stigma of not having a child,
connects to this (as yet) unwed young woman, Mary, who has the shame of a baby
that was really hard to explain to anyone. Both women speak strongly of God’s
love and inclusion. Indeed, they say, all are welcome at God’s table, not just
the usual in-crowd.
For Roman Catholics and some
other branches of the Church, today is a very special day that celebrates the
assumption of Mary. She is a Co-Redeemer with Christ whose job description is
to act as a go-between with us earthly sinners and God in heaven. The names of
some Roman Catholic churches around the world have a strong reference to this
concept: Our Lady of Perpetual Help, Our Lady of Grace, Queen of the Universe,
Our Lady of Good Counsel, Star of the Sea.
During the Middle Ages, as
the church's leadership became more and more distant from the people, Mary
became important in the prayer lives of ordinary folk. She was one who could
empathise with their plight and mediate forgiveness. In the councils of the
Church through the centuries, she gradually gained supernatural qualities…
She was declared free from
personal sin before her birth and to this day (known as the Immaculate
Conception, a doctrine formally proclaimed in 1854). She remained perpetually a
virgin (a doctrine affirmed by several church councils by the 7th century), and
she was taken directly from earth to heaven (known as the Assumption, confirmed
in 1950).
All of that might seem a bit
much to many who see this as an over emphasis of her role to the extent of her veneration
almost on par with Jesus.
But, maybe some have gone too
far in the other direction. For many Protestants, Mary is just a peasant woman
chosen to bring the Son of God into the world. Roman Catholics accuse
Protestants of putting Mary on a shelf to gather dust, ignoring her role in
salvation history.
Both worship of Mary and
reducing her to a mere biological role, miss out on something very important:
that is Mary's example as a person of faith, called by God, struggling with
the daily demands of her life. It is Mary who can help us to keep preparing
spiritually for Christ’s coming to us now, and who reminds us to keep singing
those songs of challenge and resistance to all that is not right in the world
around us.
It is the gospel of Luke that
best portrays the fullness of Mary's human life as an example of faith. Luke's portrait of Mary lets her out to
stand flesh and blood, life-sized, before us. The gospel invites us to participate
with her in giving birth to, raising, mourning, and—eventually—following Jesus
Christ our Lord in the kind of life that can also upend our world.
Luke portrays her in a
startling role: one that shakes up the way we may have been taught to think of
her. He invites us to stop observing her and start imitating her instead.
Mary’s song of praise is to a God who lifts the humble like her, and chooses
her, rather than a privileged queen or princess, to be bearer of God's Son. She
foreshadows her son's prophetic ministry that will do the same thing.
Imitating Mary means being
willing to let go all our preconceptions, allowing God to use us - ordinary you
and me - who long to share the love of Christ to those around us.
I was reminded recently of
the words of a Sufi, Bayazid[i], who said this about
himself:
I was a revolutionary when I
was young, and my prayer to God was: ‘Lord, give me all the energy to change
the world.’”
“As I approached middle age
and realised that half my life was gone without my changing a single soul, I
changed my prayer to: ’Lord, give me the grace to change all those who come in
contact with me. Just my family and friends, and I shall be content.’”
“Now that I am an old man and
my days are numbered, my one prayer is, ‘Lord, give me the grace to change
myself.’ If I had prayed for this right from the start, I would not have wasted
my life.”
So, maybe nearly enough said.
Perhaps what we need to do,
along with praying the Sufi’s prayer that we might be changed as well… is to
sing: to find our voice and take
Mary as our inspiration for whatever time God has left for us in this world.
What will your song be?
One of joy, of rage, of love,
of crying for justice? Or of forgiveness, peace, a longing that everything
could be different, new, alive? Scattering the proud? Lifting up the humble?
Filling the hungry with good things and sending the rich empty away? Or… a
completely new song, inspired by others but finding our own voice?
Yes, we can sing: sing the
songs of Alice or Andrew, of Ralph or Ruth, of whoever we are and whatever we
are called … to be bearers of this same Christ in our world. To have the same outcome
to our song and prayer of being changed into the likeness of Christ.
How good would that be?
I love a song by Dunedin hymn
writer Colin Gibson who captures this beautifully. It’s called:
He Came Singing Love [ii]
He came singing love
He lived singing love
He died, singing love.
He arose in silence…
For the Love to go on
We must make it our song;
You and I be the singers….
[ii] He came singing Love
Words © 1994 Hope Publishing Company, 380 S Main Pl, Carol Stream, IL 60188
Amen
[i] From: De Mello, Anthony (1987, 1988),
The Song of The Bird, Guiarat Sahitya Prakash, Anand, India, pg 174-175
and he lived singing love;
he died, singing love
He arose in silence.
For the love to go on
we must make it our song;
you and I be the singers.
He came singing faith
and he lived singing faith;
he died, singing faith.
He arose in silence.
For the faith to go on
we must make it our song;
you and I be the singers.
He came singing hope
and he lived singing hope;
he died, singing hope.
He arose in silence.
For the hope to go on
we must make it our song;
you and I be the singers.
He came singing peace
and he lived singing peace;
he died, singing peace.
He arose is silence.
For the peace to go on
we must make it our song;
you and I be the singers.
